Tips from an expert: Growing your real estate business

“Start running your business like a business, which means knowing your numbers, knowing your cost per transaction, knowing your ROI on any marketing expenses and not trying to do everything yourself,” said Jared James, real estate coach and speaker.

“If you are spending any of your time on activities where the result is not changed by you being involved in it, then you are taking time away from important key performance indicator activities that could be generating more revenue for you. You will never go to the level that you belong to as a solopreneur. If you want to grow, then you have to look for ways to replace yourself and specialize in the areas you are more naturally great in,” he added.

James stressed the importance of a customer relationship manager. “Agents are allowing their level of follow-up with past clients, leads and others to be determined by their memory and how busy or not busy they are. In other words, if they aren’t too busy and can remember who to follow up with, then they do it. But if they get too busy it just never happens and it is costing them tens of thousands, and in some cases, hundreds of thousands of dollars,” he said.

James will be presenting Seven Specific Ways to Create Predictable Transactions twice at Triple Play on Tuesday, Dec. 5, once in the morning and once in the afternoon. “What I hear so often from agents who attend this session is that they have so many ‘a-ha’ moments where they find themselves saying, ‘Why am I not doing that?’ My goal for the session is to educate the agents as to what they could be doing to create predictable revenue and then to inspire them to actually follow through, which is all that really matters. Execution,” he said.

Encouraging engagement on social media is one key to success, said James. “Go on Facebook and update your status to say, ‘On a scale of 1-10, 1 meaning no chance and 10 meaning bring the buyer, if I had a buyer for your property at the right price how likely would you be to sell? Comment below and let me know and tag someone else that you think might be a 10.’ This kind of post creates engagement and starts the conversation with people potentially thinking of selling,” he said.